


Samuel Tallmadge: A Night At the Museum Verse

by LibertyKingdom



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: tw: mentions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 05:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9421481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibertyKingdom/pseuds/LibertyKingdom
Summary: Premise: When Samuel Tallmadge wakes up as part of a museum display several hundred years after the American Revolutionary war, he is in for a real nightmare.





	

The rapping of boots against a hard floor caused a stirring deep within the slumbering Captain's chest. Each step beckoned him: Wake up, Wake up...there could be danger afoot! Wake up, Samuel.

Two azure pools slowly emerge from between halos of gold and brown lashes. The younger Tallmadge needed a few minutes for his sparkling eyes to adjust to the drastic change in lighting. He moved his hands to wipe away a few wiry and matted strands blocking his eye only to have his arms meet with great resistance. Panic surged through every vein as he noticed that he was bound with shackles.

A flashing series of intense lights, much like rapid lightning, caught the already frightened Captain off guard. The hairs on the back of neck seemed to stand on end and his chest racks heavily for air as he suddenly finds himself staring into a sea of curious but unfamiliar faces. A roaring tide of voices: young, old, understandable, and unintelligible soon slammed over him and an audio track of suffering buried his quieted pleas for explanation.

"This is the HMS JERSEY, what many prisoners called Hell on Earth. The last place many captured Rebel soldiers would see....." 

Eyes slowly averted to study his surroundings that several little hands pointed to. A gasp pulls across his lips as Samuel realized that he had once more awakened in the bowls of the Hellish Jersey. The young Captain soon discerned that his freedom and his reunion with Benjamin, Caleb, and the others must have been nothing but a dream. The boards behind his back, the mire streaked across his skin and clothing, and the images of men dying and feeding rats to his left and to his right, attested to that. His lips began to quiver under the emotional strain of the situation and having to relive the nightmarish terror of the British soldiers.

He patiently waits for the sea of faces to disperse before he yanks violently at the chains. When they would not budge the fiftieth time as he fought with them, he let out a loud cry of frustration. "GOD!!! PLEASE!!!! NO!!! PLEASEEEE!!!!" The young Captain shouts before the violence of chest-wracking sobs steal over him, stifling all of his ability to speak coherently. He slowly sinks to his knees like a desperate sinner would at the alter of God, in pursuit of forgiveness. "I....if th.....this be my penance....God, then I shall pay it fully," comes his heartbreaking whispered utterance, as his forehead meets the cold canvas covered floor.

The exhibit lights lower, the shadows slip in to reclaim the territory it rightfully owns. The soundtrack of suffering is silenced, leaving a terribly eerie hush in its wake. However it is too late to spare him, the psychological damage has already been done. Samuel couldn't stop himself from rattling as he bitterly lamented not for himself, but the memories of those who did not survive their imprisonment. Some of whom had been his men, his charges. The people he was supposed to ensure the safety of. He had failed them, just as he had his elder brother. And to his chagrin the same kind of scenes had played out before him without ceasing. His fellow soldiers and Sons of Liberty being slaughtered, beaten, and starved to death; all because they fought for their homes, their families, and their freedoms....against the tyrannical king.

There is a terrible shudder that rushes up the young Captain's spine as the darkness sets in. "Th..the Lord be my Shepard, I...shall want naught.... He makes me layeth to rest..... beside the quiet waters...." comes his whispered scripture. For it is in the scriptures that Samuel feels comforted and finds some tiny twinge strength to carry onwards.

The young Captain buried his heated and reddened face into his shackled hands; out of sight from the few remaining and gawking onlookers. The younger Tallmadge choked on his chaotic breaths and could feel himself nearly hyperventilating as a torrent of silver orbs decorate his face, hands, and slip down his neck.

The sound of a familiar and loving voice startled him so badly that Samuel heart sprung into a flurry of rapid beating and his body jilted. Adrenaline pushed through every vein like raging waters of a flood; overcoming its banks and whisking away full homes and cars. The floods leaving nothing but utter destruction in their wake the way the recession of adrenaline leaves a grogginess in its wake.

The other calming voice dolefully breathed, "I should have protected you." To which, Samuel's first reply was a series of loud indiscernible sobs and half mangled words of forgiveness. Even as broken as Samuel was, he could never blame Benjamin for his own fate. "T....th....this....be....be naught...y....your fault. I...it be my own. Y....y... you...c...could n...not p....protect... me...fr...from myself,"comes Samuel's panted reply.

Azure hues squeezed shut against the nagging fear that his brother would once more vanish into the thin air, from which he just arrived. "B....Ben... its.... so......so a...awful....." Samuel sputtered, his words barely reaching an audible octave. He must have been experiencing another fevered delusion why else would Ben be on the Jersey?

"T....tell me.... me this all be a dream. Pl....p...please....." Samuel desperately begged, his tone no louder than a breathy murmuring. His weepy blue-hues fixated upon his elder brother. Still shackled hands slowly extend towards Benjamin, boney fingers coiled into the fabric of his brother's coat tightly as if, at any moment, the shelter Ben's presence provided him would be removed from him ever so cruelly. Then he'd be left to weather this infernal storm alone.

"A....All th...the screaming........and d...death.... m....make it stop. Ben, p....please make it stop!!" The proof that Samuel was still alive manifested itself in the form of gruelingly torturous pants as he implored Benjamin to deliver him from this living hell. He leans forward to rest against his brother. His body fatigued from the trembling and sobbing.


End file.
